


Goodfeathers

by alexclusive



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Humor, Spinoff, non-monster Ardyn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 18:50:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13576767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexclusive/pseuds/alexclusive
Summary: In which Cor doesn't know how to ride a chocobo, Ardyn has a story to tell, and Regis is doing his level best not to commit fratricide in the process.A fic set in a loving spinoff of the same universe asHigharollaKockamamie'sThe Temptation of Saint Anthony, but with This Guy. Also loosely for Cor Leonis Week's Day 2: Cor With Animals.





	Goodfeathers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HigharollaKockamamie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HigharollaKockamamie/gifts).



> As a note, this fic is set in what I've been lovingly referring to as _the Laverne and Shirleyverse_ , in that it takes place in approximately the same universe as _The Temptation of Saint Anthony, but with This Guy_ , but with no actual promises that anything herein is strict canon to that universe. The _Laverne and Shirley_ to Saint Anthony's _Happy Days_ , if you will. 
> 
> Immense thanks as always to [HigharollaKockamamie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/HigharollaKockamamie/pseuds/HigharollaKockamamie) for letting me play with the phenomenal sandbox she's created; this work in particular was written off of the prompt, "The Dumbest Scheme Cor and Ardyn Ever Pulled, and How Regis Found Out."
> 
> This fic can also be read for Cor Leonis Week 2018's prompt, "Cor With Animals".

The thing about younger brothers, Regis thought — as he pinched the bridge of his nose and regarded his own, who at the present moment happened to be sitting next to their father's best Crownsguard on the mounting bench that ran behind the chocobo stables, covered in what he sincerely hoped was only mud and not looking nearly as guilty as he should have been about it — was that they seemed to have some sort of innate knack for allowing you to love them fervently with every fiber of your being, and yet still find yourself contemplating smothering them with a pillow.

"Let's go over it one more time," he said in a half-strangled voice, as though every word pained him to utter. It did.

"Yes, well," Ardyn began eagerly, sitting forward a little with his elbows on the tops of his knees and his hand folded in front of him. "You see, if we're to be _thorough_ about it, then I suppose we must start at the beginning. Thus: at the dawn of time, the Six created humanity in their divine image and —"

"Stop," Regis answered with a raise of his hand, mostly so that he didn't end up pinching the bridge of his nose again, lest he end up bruising it from all the abuse it was taking in his exasperation today. This was the fourth time they had been _over it_ thus far, and Ardyn was clearly relishing the opportunity to indulge his penchant for expansive and outlandish monologuing, given the fact that the stories he'd offered thus far had grown wilder and less plausible with every iteration. "Not you. Cor, let's go over it one more time."

"Kweh," said Cor's bag, which was nestled between him and Ardyn on the bench.

Silently, Cor lifted his head and looked back at him, face impassive and eyes guarded. People who knew him less well might have thought that he was simply being his usual reserved self. Regis, on the other hand, knew him more than well enough to recognize the carefully blank expression Cor always wore when he was inwardly doing some very fast thinking.

"Out with it, Cor," Regis pressed, tersely.

But Ardyn, it seemed, had other ideas — well, either that or he was physically incapable of staying quiet for longer than five seconds at a stretch. It was sometimes difficult to tell which.

"You took your first pinch like a man," he interjected loftily, leaning into an exaggerated stretch that ended up with one of his arms tossed easily around Cor's shoulders, and the other falling easily into a sweeping gesture that seemed to indicate the whole of the lawn stretched out behind Regis. "And you learned the two greatest things in life."

Cor's eyes gleamed. For a second it seemed as though he was carefully suppressing a laugh.

Regis sighed. "You're a menace," he told Ardyn, eyes narrowed, as his brother immediately pretended to find the fingernails of his free hand incredibly interesting.

"There is no law," Ardyn pointed out breezily, "against the recitation of movie quotes in friendly conversation."

"There is when the next line of that quote is _never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut_ ," Regis retorted, shucking a hand through his hair in irritation. "Now one of you better start talking, because if you don't, I'm going to piece this together for myself, and I'm not going to like what I come up with when I do."

"I will venture to point out," Ardyn replied, his face the picture of innocence, "that I did attempt to accomplish precisely that, and you indicated that I should refrain."

At his side, Cor's bag began to rustle.

" _Cor_ , for the _last time_ —"

"Drautos bet me he could kick my ass in a chocobo race," Cor said at last, his voice almost suspiciously normal in its rather flat tone and inflection. "I don't know how to ride a chocobo."

"Positively criminal, is it not?" Ardyn butted in, despite no one asking him for his opinion.

To let himself be led off onto a tangent now would be the greatest of follies, Regis knew, and yet the inclination to do so proved too overwhelming to resist. "What do you mean, you don't know how to ride a chocobo?"

Cor shrugged. "Never learned."

Regis frowned. "Riding lessons are a standard part of Crownsguard training."

"I was sick that day," Cor offered.

Regis frowned deeper. "They're also offered through the stables on a bi-weekly basis."

"I get sick a lot," Cor agreed.

"As resident physician, I can confirm this assertion," Ardyn interjected as a positively shit-eating grin started to pull at the corners of his mouth. "Crownsguard Leonis does indeed regularly seek me out to subject himself to the palliative ministrations of my healing hands..."

"Nope," Regis said instantly, resisting the urge to cover his ears and opting instead to change the subject before Ardyn could really get going. "Whatever. Go back to the part about the bet."

"That's a fancy way of saying you try to cop a feel on me every time I pass you in the corridor," Cor muttered under his breath.

"Palliative ministrations," Ardyn repeated sweetly, and a second later Cor jumped, and Ardyn's hand was missing from his shoulder, and _okay Regis was definitely not going to try to fill in the blanks on that one, no sir_.

"Cor. The bet?" he demanded instead, suppressing a groan.

"So I wanted to learn how to ride one," Cor finished. "His Grace knows how, so he helped."

"And that's a perfectly clear explanation that tells me absolutely nothing," Regis replied irritably. "Whose idea was it to use Father's personal mount as your practice steed? The one that was a private gift from the Altissian ambassador?"

Cor carefully stared straight ahead. "Some wise guy once said not to look a gift chocobo in the beak."

"Oh, come now, Regis," Ardyn added loftily, and motioned expansively with his hands again. "You know as well as I do that they gifted His Majesty with that hideous beast in the hopes that he'd be thrown from it and die a majestic and ludicrous demise."

And the thing was, as much as Regis hated to admit it, Ardyn did have something of a point. Everyone with any connection whatsoever to the royal stables knew that a large part of the reason King Mors always found an excuse to be too busy to ride was the fact that if he ever decided to, the delicate intricacies of political considerations would obligate him to do so on the back of the Altissian ambassador's gift. Given the bird's temperament, it was not altogether inconceivable that the supposed token of the ambassador's esteem really had been some sort of slapdash foreign plot to assassinate him, as Ardyn surmised.

"I notice Cor survived," he observed instead, a little sourly.

"He does have a knack for that, doesn't he?" Ardyn agreed, gazing at Cor with a look of irrepressable adoration. "My darling immortal."

"Don't call me that," Cor replied instantly.

"My lion."

"Or that."

"My light and my stars."

"What?"

"Favored highest among all my concubines —"

" _Stop_ ," Regis and Cor snapped in perfect unison, and then looked at each other in surprise, and then shared a silent nod of solidarity while Ardyn wasn't looking.

Hastily, before Ardyn could open his mouth again, Regis tried to drag the conversation back to some semblance of being on course, which was proving approximately as difficult as attempting to herd a roomful of coeurl through the eye of a needle. "So you stole Father's chocobo —"

"Borrowed, technically," Ardyn interrupted.

"Borrowing implies permission and an intent to return the object in question."

"We had permission," Ardyn insisted.

Despite himself, Regis's eyebrows went up. "Did you really."

"Naturally," Ardyn said, his expression schooled into the very picture of innocence. "I asked Cor's permission to take it, and he said yes. Then he asked me for the same, and I graciously extended it to him."

Regis began to feel as though a vein in his forehead was going to pop free. "How is it," he began in a quiet and even voice, "that someone as educated and clearly brilliant as you genuinely seems to think that an excuse like that will actually work?"

"Oh, I don't," Ardyn answered calmly. "But it does work wonders at driving His Majesty absolutely batty. Which usually makes him forget the thing he was angry about in the first place, in favor of being angry at my overt insolence."

"Well, seeing as how I'm not Father," Regis replied tersely, "will you _kindly_ refrain?"

Cor nudged Ardyn with his elbow. "Hey. That's it, you have to do what he says now," he said, _sotto voce_. "He said the thing."

"Ah, curses. He did, didn't he?" Ardyn replied, in the same conspiratorial tone.

"What," Regis said, bewildered.

"You asked him kindly," Cor answered, which yet again was technically an explanation that in practice explained absolutely nothing.

"I — okay...?"

"Even in the book of lies, sometimes you find truth," Ardyn remarked cryptically, and began to pick at the hems of his filthy fingerless gloves. "Now then, where was I? Oh, yes. So we took Bucephalus out of the stables — with great difficulty, I might add, given that he bites — and while I attempted to keep him corralled, Cor leapt upon his back."

"I still can't believe that's really its name. Somebody actually called that thing Byoosey-whatever," Cor grumbled, leaning forward to hunch over his knees with his shoulders drawn and his lip slightly curled. Regis was fairly certain he'd never seen a more emphatic nonverbal expression of the phrase " _rich people_ " figuratively uttered in his entire life. 

The bag at his side squirmed around.

"Bucephalus," Ardyn confirmed, lilting over the vowels like he was born to do nothing but pronounce overly complicated words with the greatest of ease.

"Who the hell names a bird that?"

"Altissians, apparently," Ardyn replied dismissively.

"So then what happened?" Regis pressed insistently, once again hoping to get them all back on track and actully hear the end of the story, preferably sometime before the next coming of Bahamut. "You let the bird out of the stable, Ardyn held it, you jumped on its back, and then...?"

Cor blinked. "Well," he said almost thoughtfully, and cocked his head to glance up at Regis, "then it kicked His Grace and started running."

"Infernian take the accursed creature," Ardyn muttered under his breath.

"With you still on its back?" Regis asked in half-disbelief, ignoring him.

Cor nodded. "Guess you could say I learned pretty quick how to ride a chocobo."

"Screaming all the way," Ardyn added, with unfeigned adoration.

"Yelling," Cor corrected stubbornly. "That was a war cry."

"My, I had no idea we were in the business of sending six-year-old girls to war lately."

Sensing that Cor was about to explode, Regis quickly interjected, "So it took off running. What then?"

Ardyn shrugged. "Well, naturally, I couldn't very well let him go haring off to parts unknown, screaming all the way. People might have thought he was heading for Taelpar Crag seeking a rematch —"

"Hey!"

"— so I hurried to summon Antesignatus Illustris and took off after him." Pleased with himself, Ardyn sat back on the bench and polished his fingernails on one of the relatively clean spots of his otherwise muddied shirt. "Rather heroically, I might add. I was very dashing about it."

"I'm sure you were," Regis sighed. "And how long did it take for you to catch up to him?"

"Oh, somewhere in the neighborhood of three hours, I would imagine," Ardyn answered. "As we came to find out, our dear Bucephalus has stamina equal in measure to his atrocious temper."

Regis froze in place, stunned. "Three _hours_?! You must've run halfway to Hammerhead!"

"A remarkably accurate guess," Ardyn agreed. "Coincidentally, it was raining in Hammerhead."

In silent agreement, Cor glared down at his filthy, mud-spattered clothes. Regis was half-surprised the mud didn't fling itself off of the fabric in sheer fright.

"Kweh-weh-weh," said Cor's bag.

"Regardless, once we'd passed through Hammerhead, dear Bucephalus changed tack and began an immediate and unhesitating advance into the wilds of Leide, naturally with our dear lion still on his back and myself and Antesignatus Illustris in hot pursuit. It was then, upon reaching the same, that we became privy to three revelations," Ardyn said with great panache. 

He raised a single finger with a flourish. "The first: that what I can only assume was an exploratory strike force of five Niflheim soldiers had somehow managed to bypass our border patrols and make their way as far through the Lucian countryside as Leide, clearly with the intention of continuing on to cross the Ostium Gorge and make their way up to infiltrate the capital."

For the second time in nearly as many minutes, Regis froze, mostly because whatever it was he had been expecting to hear out of this story of Ardyn's, _covert squads of Niflheim soldiers_ had not been a possibility he had actually considered. "Are you shitting me," he blurted, unthinking.

"He's not shitting you," Cor replied, which either meant Ardyn was absolutely shitting him, or that he was telling the unequivocal truth. With Cor it was sometimes difficult to tell which.

"I am the very antithesis of shitting you," Ardyn agreed. "Regardless: the second revelation we experienced was that — and Regis, you know how it pains me dearly to confess this in light of my utmost respect for the Altissian ambassador, but — it seems our dear Bucephalus is not quite the majestic war stallion we all had presumed he was."

A beat passed.

"He's a she," Cor supplied with a hint of a nod.

"And third," Ardyn continued, without missing a beat, "It seems that the aforementioned Altissian ambassador is a common poacher along with being a noble dignitary, as dear Bucephalus apparently did _not_ come from the purebred lineage that was touted of him upon his presentation to Our Majesty, but was in fact rather hastily captured somewhere out in our own wilds, I presume in some variety of a belated eleventh-hour realization that wasting the money on a perfectly good purebred chocobo only to turn it into an ill-advised bird assassin was a patently half-witted idea."

Regis was left at a complete loss. "That sounds like the same thing as the second thing," he said, for lack of anything better to say.

"Ah, so it is," Ardyn replied, as though he'd been hoping Regis would point that out all along, which he probably was. He touched his fingertips lightly to his breastbone in seeming supplication. "Forgive me. Rather, the third revelation was that our dear Bucephalus, who is in fact a she, has been as ill-tempered as she's been all this time because immediately prior to her capture, she had laid an egg in the wild. And then was summarily separated from it."

"Kweh," Cor's bag agreed.

The pieces were starting to fall into place by now, one by one, and the more they added up the more Regis was starting to feel the mother of all headaches coming on. His face would never be the same, he thought sullenly, but still surrendered to the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose again one last time, hoping to stave the impending migraine off somewhat. 

Predictably, it didn't work. "So what does that have to do with the Nifs?"

"Why, it has everything to do with the Nifs," Ardyn said brightly. "You see, as it happened, the poor unsuspecting fools had somehow possessed the supreme misfortune to make their camp not far from where the Lady Bucephalus had made and concealed her nest. Oh, Regis, my humble words could not possibly do it justice — if only you could have seen it with your own two eyes. There they were, the poor oblivious stooges, milling around and preparing to make their camp for the coming night, when suddenly and with absolutely no warning whatsoever, who comes charging into their camp but Insomnia's own Cor Leonis, howling like the behemoths of the Infernian himself were on his tail, mounted regally on the back of a rampaging war chocobo flying the Lucian standard."

"One of them shit himself," Cor supplied helpfully, which Regis honestly could have done without knowing.

"And who could blame him," Ardyn agreed, "witnessing the majesty of such an unparalleled spectacle."

"Not to mention that one guy who witnessed the majesty of her kicking him in the face."

"Your equitation was worthy of a thousand ballads," Ardyn replied with dreamy adulation.

"My what?"

"You rode good."

"Oh," Cor replied, and seemed to try to hide a flicker of sheepish pride at what he evidently took to be high praise. "Thanks."

"As I am certain you will do in your forthcoming match against Drautos," Ardyn said, before continuing, "But as I was saying. So, then, a glorious battle ensued between our mounted cavalry and the bewildered Niflheim forces, which ultimately concluded with our sending the invading Nifs running back for the border, tails between their legs and assuredly with even more petrifying tales of the Mad Prince and his pet Immortal in tow."

"Also, we found the egg," Cor added, almost like an afterthought, after that mental image had its time to sink in.

"It hatched on the way back," Ardyn confirmed.

"Kweh," Cor's bag finished.

Regis had lost track of how long they had been at this by now. He was also starting to feel as though he had somehow lost all control of his life, and was beginning to wonder if he ought to regret ever wanting to get to the bottom of this debacle in the first place. Surely he could have left it to their father. Or to the marshal of the Crownsguard. Or to someone else. Or to _literally anyone else_.

(Except that no, he couldn't have, because this was Ardyn, and, well. Sometimes part of being an older brother was simply — well, precisely this.)

So instead, Regis summoned up all of his patience and determinedly resisted the urge to scream. "I see. And so, where is Bucephalus now?" he said calmly, in lieu of screaming, which took more effort than it really should have.

"Back in the stable," Cor said. "We changed the nameplate to Byoosey-lina."

"Of course you did," Regis said through gritted teeth. "And the bag?"

"Yes, well, about that," Ardyn interjected hastily, shooting a quick glance at Cor before turning his most wide-eyed and pleading expression onto his elder brother. "As they say, all's well that ends well, and certainly there can be no dispute that, whatever the circumstances of the interim, a defeat of theoretically invading Nifs is an undoubtedly preferential outcome —"

"Ardyn," Regis sighed.

"And further, His Majesty has his noble assassination attempt back in one piece, and the two of us are both back in one piece as well, and assuredly there can be no doubt that given his exhibited prowess as an admittedly impromptu cavalier today, our dear Cor is a shoo-in to achieve victory in his bet with Drautos —"

" _Ardyn_ ," Regis said again, a little more emphatically.

"So I should think," Ardyn continued in the same hurried breath, "that given the heroic efforts on Cor's part toward thwarting the plots of our enemies of the state, to say nothing of the fact that all leading scientific sources are in general agreement that chocobo biology gives them a predisposition toward imprinting on the first caretaker they encounter upon hatching free from their shell —"

"I was carrying the egg," Cor clarified. "When it hatched on the way home."

"— that as Cor was carrying the egg, which as he has correctly pointed out did hatch on the way home, then certainly he has earned the distinction of keeping the chick in question. Considering everything," Ardyn finished breathlessly.

Regis blinked, stunned silent for the — well, no, he'd actually lost count at that point of how many times he'd been stunned to silence that day.

"We were kind of hoping you could convince the king," Cor explained tentatively. "So it doesn't end up being another Byoosey-lina. Being separated from something it cares about."

"The baby chocobo imprinted on — oh, Archaean's _balls_ ," Regis said at last, which somehow ended up being the straw that broke the anak's back in the face of all the unparalleled shenanigans that had just been laid at his feet, and his face dropped into his hands as he started laughing so hard he genuinely, truly thought that the damned Altissian assassin chocobo was going to claim yet another royal victim, inadvertently.

Cor and Ardyn looked at each other, a little bewildered themselves, but remained carefully silent until he finally managed to get his hysterics under control, which had to have taken around seven straight minutes before he was finally breathing normally enough to form words again.

" _Gods_. Forget it. Forget the cover story," Regis said at last, scrubbing at his eyes, which were still streaming with tears of mirth. "Just tell that one. No one will ever believe you. It'll be fine."

"So he can keep it?" Ardyn asked, hopefully.

"I'll come up with something to placate Father," Regis replied. "Yes. Fine. Yes, he can keep the chocobo."

"Great," Cor said, and reached into his bag, lifting free a tiny mass of feathers that were neither black nor proper yellow, but which in fact proved to be an almost breathtaking hue of pure gold. Like a proud parent at a school conference, Ardyn clasped his hands in front of his chest and silently cooed as Cor lifted the fussy bundle of down up toward the sky, displaying it prominently for all present to see. In the sunlight, its stubby feathers _glistened_.

Regis's eyes went wide.

"No takebacks," Cor said, and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes:
> 
> • Ardyn's quote, "You took your first pinch like a man, and you learned the two most important things in life. [...] Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut" is from Martin Scorsese's _Goodfellas_ , from which this work also takes its title.
> 
> • "Would you kindly" is a reference to the _Bioshock_ series, which evidently Ardyn has played but Regis has not.
> 
> • Bucephalus was the name of Alexander the Great's horse, famous for being untamable. Pronunciation can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wr2SVKCsSo&t=0m5s)!
> 
> • Credit for the name of Ardyn's chocobo, "Antesignatus Illustris", belongs wholly to [HigharollaKockamamie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/HigharollaKockamamie/pseuds/HigharollaKockamamie); it translates roughly into "distinguished soldier".
> 
> • The concept for this fic was initially rooted in [this video of Cor running along behind the chocobros](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWax9xf629w&t=5m00s) instead of riding a chocobo himself.
> 
> Comments and feedback are always welcomed and appreciated! Thank you very much for reading!


End file.
